["'He had to become thirty-four,' explained the inspector, 'because the real Duggan, the little boy who died at two and a half, was born in April 1929. That couldn't be changed. But nobody would query a man who happened to be thirty-seven but whose passport said he was thirty-four. One would believe the passport.' Thomas looked at the two photographs. Calthrop looked heftier, fuller in the face, a more sturdily built man. But to become Duggan he could have changed his appearance. Indeed, he had probably changed it even for his first meeting with the OAS chiefs, and remained with changed appearance ever since, including the period when he applied for the false passport. Men like this evidently had to be able to live in a second identity for months at a time if they were to escape identification. It was probably by being this shrewd and painstaking that Calthrop had managed to stay off every police file in the world. If it had not been for that bar rumour in the Caribbean they would never have got him at all. But from now on he had become Duggan, dyed hair, tinted contact lenses, slimmed-down figure, raised heels. It was the description of Duggan, with passport number and photograph, that he sent down to the telex room to be transmitted to Paris. Lebel, he estimated, glancing at his watch, should have them all by two in the morning. 'After that, it's up to them,' suggested the inspector. 'Oh, no, boyo, after that there's a lot more work to be done,' said Thomas maliciously. 'First thing in the morning we start checking the airline ticket offices, the cross-Channel ferries, the continental train ticket offices . . . the whole lot. We not only have to find out who he is now, but where he is now.' At that moment a call came through from Somerset House. The last of the passport applications had been checked, and all were in order. 'OK, thank the clerks and stand down. Eight-thirty sharp in my office, the lot of you,' said Thomas. A sergeant entered with a copy of the statement of the newsagent, who had been taken to his local police station and interviewed there. Thomas glanced at the sworn statement, which said little more than had told the Special Branch inspector on his own doorstep.","'There's nothing we can hold him on,' said Thomas. 'Tell them at Paddington nick they can let him go back to his bed and his dirty photos, will you?' The sergeant said 'Sir,' and left. Thomas settled back in the armchair to try to get some sleep. While he had been talking it had quietly become 15th August.","","CHAPTER SIXTEEN Madame la Baronne de la Chalonniere paused at the door of her room and turned towards the young Englishman who had escorted her there. In the half-darkness of the corridor she could not make out the details of his face; it was just a blur in the gloom. It had been a pleasant evening and she was still undecided whether she would or would not insist that it end at her doorway. The question had been at the back of her mind for the past hour. On the one hand, although she had taken lovers before, she was a respectable married woman staying for a single night in a provincial hotel, and not in the habit of permitting herself to be seduced by total strangers. On the other hand she was at her most vulnerable, and was candid enough to admit it to herself. She had spent the day at the military cadet academy at Barcelonette, high in the Alps, attending the passing-out parade of her son as a newly breveted second lieutenant in the Chasseurs Alpins, his father's old regiment. Although she had undoubtedly been the most attractive mother at the parade, the sight of her son receiving his officer's bars and commissioned into the French Army had brought home to her with something of a shock the full realization that she was a few months short of forty, and the mother of a grown son. Although she could pass for five years younger, and sometimes felt ten years less than her age, the knowledge that her son was twenty and probably screwing his own women by now, no more to come home for the school holidays and go shooting in the forests around the family chateau, had caused her to wonder what she was going to do now. She had accepted the laborious gallantry of the creaking old colonel who was the academy commandant, and the admiring glances of the pink-cheeked class-mates of her own boy, and had felt suddenly very lonely. Her marriage, she had known for years, was finished in all but name, for the Baron was too busy chasing the teenage dollies of Paris between the Bilboquet and Castel's to come","down to the chateau for the summer, or even to turn up at his son's commissioning. It had occurred to her as she drove the family saloon back from the high Alps to stay overnight at a country hotel outside Gap, that she was handsome, virile and alone. Nothing now seemed to lie in prospect but the attentions of elderly gallants like the colonel at the academy, or frivolous and unsatisfying flirtations with boys, and she was damned if she was going to devote herself to charitable works. Not yet, at any rate. But Paris was an embarrassment and a humiliation, with Alfred constantly chasing his teenagers and half society laughing at him and the other half laughing at her. She had been wondering about the future over coffee in the lounge, and feeling an urge to be told she was a woman and a beautiful one, and not simply Madame la Baronne, when the Englishman had walked across and asked if, as they were alone in the residents' salon, he might take his coffee with her, she had been caught unawares, and too surprised to say no. She could have kicked herself a few seconds later, but after ten minutes she did not regret accepting his offer. He was, after all, between thirty-three and thirty-five, or so she estimated, and that was the best age for a man. Although he was English, he spoke fluent and rapid French; he was reasonably good-looking, and could be amusing. She had enjoyed the deft compliments, and had even encouraged him to pay them, so that it was close to midnight when she rose, explaining that she had to make an early start the following morning. He had escorted her up the stairs and at the landing window had pointed outside at the wooded hill slopes bathed in bright moonlight. They had stayed for a few moments looking at the sleeping countryside, until she had glanced at him and seen that his eyes were not on the view beyond the window but on the deep divide between her breasts where the moonlight turned the skin to alabaster white. He had smiled when detected, and leaned to her ear and murmured, 'Moonlight turns even the most civilized man into a primitive.' She had turned and walked on up the stairs, feigning","annoyance, but inside her the unabashed admiration of the stranger caused a flutter of pleasure. 'It had been a most pleasant evening, monsieur.' She had her hand on the handle of the door, and wondered vaguely whether the man would try to kiss her. In a way she hoped he would. Despite the triteness of the words she could feel the hunger beginning in her belly. Perhaps it was just the wine, or the fiery Calvados he had ordered with the coffee, or the scene in the moonlight, but she was aware that this was not how she had foreseen the evening ending. She felt the stranger's arms slip round her back, without a word of warning, and his lips came down on to hers. They were warm and firm. 'This must stop,' said a voice inside her. A second later she had responded to the kiss, mouth closed. The wine made her head swim, it must have been the effect of the wine. She felt the arms round her tighten perceptibly and they were hard and strong. Her thigh was pressed against him below the belly and through the satin of her dress she felt the rigid arrogance of his prick. For a second she withdrew her leg, then pushed it back again. There was no conscious moment of decision-taking; the realization came without effort that she wanted him badly, between her thighs, inside her belly, all night. She felt the door behind her open inwards, broke the embrace and stepped backwards into her room. 'Viens, primitif.' He stepped into the room and closed the door. Throughout the night every archive in the Pantheon was checked again, this time for the name of Duggan, and with more success. A card was unearthed showing that Alexander James Quentin Duggan entered France on the Brabant Express from Brussels on 22nd July. An hour later another report from the same frontier post, the Customs unit that regularly travels on the express trains from Brussels to Paris and back, doing its task while the train is in motion, was found with Duggan's name among those passengers on the Etoile du Nord Express from Paris to Brussels on 31st July.","From the Prefecture of Police came a hotel card filled out in the name of Duggan, and quoting a passport number that matched the one Duggan was carrying, as contained in the information from London, showing that he had stayed in a small hotel near the Place de la Madeleine between 22nd July and 30th inclusive. Inspector Caron was all for raiding the hotel, but Lebel preferred to pay a quiet visit in the small hours of the morning and had a chat with the proprietor. He was satisfied the man he sought was not at the hotel by 15th August, and the proprietor was grateful for the Commissaire's discretion in not waking all his guests. Lebel ordered a plain-clothes detective to check into the hotel as a guest until further notice, and to stay there without moving outside, in case Duggan turned up again. The proprietor was happy to co- operate. 'This July visit,' Lebel told Caron when he was back in his office at 4.30, 'was a reconnaissance trip. Whatever he has got planned, it's all laid on.' Then he lay back in his chair, gazed at the ceiling, and thought. Why did he stay in a hotel? Why not in the house of one of the OAS sympathizers, like all the other OAS agents on the run? Because he does not trust the OAS sympathizers to keep their mouths shut. He's quite right. So he works alone, trusting nobody, plotting and planning his own operation in his own way, using a false passport, probably behaving normally, politely, raising no suspicion. The proprietor of the hotel whom he had just interviewed confirmed this, 'A real gentleman,' he had said. A real gentleman, thought Lebel, and dangerous as a snake. They are always the worst kind, for a policeman, the real gentlemen. Nobody ever suspected them. He glanced at the two photographs that had come in from London, of Calthrop and Duggan. Calthrop became Duggan, with a change of height, hair and eyes, age and, probably, manner. He tried to build up a mental image of the man. What would he be like to meet? Confident, arrogant, assured of his immunity. Dangerous, devious, meticulous, leaving nothing to chance. Armed of course, but with what? An automatic under the left armpit? A throwing knife lashed against the ribs? A rifle? But where would he put it when he went through Customs? How would he get near to General de Gaulle","carrying such a thing, when even women's handbags were suspect within twenty yards of the President, and men with long packages were hustled away without ceremony from anywhere near a public appearance by the President? Mon Dieu, and that colonel from the Elysee thinks he's just another thug! Lebel was aware he had one advantage: he knew the killer's new name, and the killer did not know that he knew. That was his only ace; apart from that it all lay with the Jackal, and nobody at the evening conference could or would realize it. If ever he gets wind of what you know before you catch him, and changes his identity again, Claude my boy, he thought, you are going to be up against it in a big way. Aloud, he said 'Really up against it.' Caron looked up. 'You're right, chief. He hasn't a chance.' Lebel was short-tempered with him, which was unusual. The lack of sleep must be beginning to tell. The finger of light from the waning moon beyond the window panes withdrew slowly across the rumpled coverlet and back towards the casement. It picked out the rumpled satin dress between the door and the foot of the bed, the discarded brassiere and limp nylons scattered on the carpet. The two figures on the bed were muffled in shadow. Colette lay on her back and gazed up at the ceiling, the fingers of one hand running idly through the blond hair of the head pillowed on her belly. Her lips parted in a half-smile as she thought back over the night. He had been good, this English primitive, hard but skilled, knowing how to use fingers and tongue and prick to bring her on five times and himself three. She could still feel the blazing heat going into her when he came, and she knew how badly she had needed a night like this for so long when she responded as she had not for years. She glanced at the small travelling clock beside the bed. It said a quarter past five. She tightened her grip in the blond hair and pulled. 'Hey.'","The Englishman muttered, half asleep. They were both lying naked among the disordered sheets, but the central heating kept the room comfortably warm. The blond head disengaged itself from her hand and slid between her thighs. She could feel the tickle of the hot breath and the tongue flickering in search again. 'No, no more.' She closed her thighs quickly, sat up and grabbed the hair, raising his face until she could look at him. He eased himself up the bed, plunged his face on to one of her fully heavy breasts and started to kiss. 'I said no.' He looked up at her. 'That's enough, lover. I have to get up in two hours, and you have to go back to your room. Now, my little English, now.' He got the message and nodded, swinging off the bed to stand on the floor, looking round for his clothes. She slid under the bedclothes, sorted them out from the mess around her knees and pulled them up to the chin. When he was dressed, with jacket and tie slung over one arm, he looked down at her in the half-darkness and she saw the gleam of teeth as he grinned. He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his right hand round to the back of her neck. His face was a few inches from hers. 'It was good?' 'Mmmmmm. It was very good. And you?' He grinned again. 'What do you think?' She laughed. 'What is your name?' He thought for a moment. 'Alex,' he lied. 'Well, Alex, it was very good. But it is also time you went back to your own room.' He bent down and gave her a kiss on the lips. 'In that case, good night, Colette.' A second later he was gone, and the door closed behind him. At seven in the morning, as the sun was rising, a local gendarme cycled up to the Hotel du Cerf, dismounted and entered the lobby. The proprietor who was already up and busy behind the reception","desk organizing the morning calls and cafe complet for the guests in their rooms, greeted him. 'Alors, bright and early?' 'As usual,' said the gendarme. 'It's a long ride out here on a bicycle, and I always leave you till the last.' 'Don't tell me,' grinned the proprietor, 'we do the best breakfast coffee in the neighbourhood. Marie-Louise, bring Monsieur a cup of coffee, and no doubt he'll take it laced with a little Trou Normand.' The country constable grinned with pleasure. 'Here are the cards,' said the proprietor, handing over the little white cards filled in the previous evening by the newly arrived guests. 'There were only three new ones last night.' The constable took the cards and put them in the leather pouch on his belt. 'Hardly worth turning up for,' he grinned, but sat on the foyer bench and waited for his coffee and Calvados, exchanging a few words of lustful banter with Marie-Louise when she brought it. It was not until eight that he got back to the gendarmerie and commissariat of Gap with his pouchful of hotel registration cards. These were then taken by the station inspector who flicked through them idly and put them in the rack, to be taken later in the day to the regional headquarters at Lyons, and later to the archives of Central Records in Paris. Not that he could see the point of it all. As the inspector was dropping the cards into the rack in the commissariat, Madame Colette de la Chalonniere settled her bill, climbed behind the wheel of her car and drove off towards the west. One floor above, the Jackal slept on until nine o'clock. Superintendent Thomas had dozed off when the phone beside him gave a shrill buzz. It was the intercom phone linking his office with the room down the corridor where the six sergeants and two inspectors had been working on a battery of telephones since his briefing had ended. He glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock. Damn, not like me to drop off. Then he remembered how many hours' sleep he had had, or rather had not had, since Dixon had summoned him on Monday","afternoon. And now it was Thursday morning. The phone buzzed again. 'Hallo.' The voice of the senior detective inspector answered. 'Friend Duggan,' he began without preliminary. 'He left London on a scheduled BEA flight on Monday morning. The booking was taken on Saturday. No doubt about the name. Alexander Duggan. Paid cash at the airport for the ticket.' 'Where to? Paris?' 'No, Super. Brussels.' Thomas's head cleared quickly. 'All right, listen. He may have gone but come back. Keep checking airline bookings to see if there have been any other bookings in his name. Particularly if there is a booking for a flight that has not yet left London. Check with advance bookings. If he came back from Brussels, I want to know. But I doubt it. I think we've lost him, although of course he left London several hours before investigations were started, so it's not our fault. OK?' 'Right. What about the search in the UK for the real Calthrop? It's tying up a lot of the provincial police, and the Yard's just been on to say that they're complaining.' Thomas thought for a moment. 'Call it off,' he said. 'I'm pretty certain he's gone.' He picked up the outside phone and asked for the office of Commissaire Lebel at the Police Judiciaire. Inspector Caron thought he was going to end up in a lunatic asylum before Thursday morning was out. First the British were on the phone at five past ten. He took the call himself, but when Superintendent Thomas insisted on speaking to Lebel he went over to the corner to rouse the sleeping form on the camp-bed. Lebel looked as if he had died a week before. But he took the call. As soon as he had identified himself to Thomas, Caron had to take the receiver back because of the language barrier. He translated what Thomas had to say, and Lebel's replies. 'Tell him,' said Lebel when he had digested the information, 'that we will handle the Belgians from here. Say that he has my very","sincere thanks for his help, and that if the killer can be traced to a location on the Continent rather than in Britain, I will inform him immediately so that he can stand his men down.' When the receiver was down both men settled back at their desks. 'Get me the Surete in Brussels,' said Lebel. The Jackal rose when the sun was already high over the hills and gave promise of another beautiful summer day. He showered and dressed, taking his check suit, well pressed, from the hands of the maid, Marie-Louise, who blushed again when he thanked her. Shortly after ten-thirty he drove the Alfa into town and went to the post office to use the long-distance telephone to Paris. When he emerged twenty minutes later he was tight-lipped and in a hurry. At a hardware store nearby he bought a quart of high-gloss lacquer in midnight blue, a half-pint tin in white, and two brushes, one a fine- tipped camel-hair for lettering, the other a two-inch soft bristle. He also bought a screwdriver. With these in the glove compartment of the car he drove back to the Hotel du Cerf and asked for his bill. While it was being prepared he went upstairs to pack, and carried the suitcases down to the car himself. When the three cases were in the boot and the hand-grip on the passenger seat, he re-entered the foyer and settled the bill. The day clerk who had taken over the reception desk would say later that he seemed hurried and nervous, and paid the bill with a new hundred-franc note. What he did not say, because he had not seen it, was that while he was in the back room getting change for the note the blond Englishman turned over the pages of the hotel registry that the clerk had been making up for that day's list of coming clients. Flicking back one page, the Englishman had seen yesterday's inscriptions including one in the name of Mme La Baronne de la Chalonniere, Haute Chalonniere, Correze. A few moments after settling the bill the roar of the Alfa was heard in the driveway, and the Englishman was gone. Just before midday more messages came into the office of Claude Lebel. The Surete of Brussels rang to say Duggan had only spent five hours in the city on Monday. He had arrived by BEA from London, but had left on the afternoon Alitalia flight to Milan. He had","paid cash at the desk for his ticket, although it had been booked on the previous Saturday by phone from London. Lebel at once placed another call with the Milanese police. As he put the phone down it rang again. This time it was the DST, to say that a report had been received as normal routine that the previous morning among those entering France from Italy over the Ventimiglia crossing point, and filling in cards as they did so, had been Alexander James Quentin Duggan. Lebel had exploded. 'Nearly thirty hours,' he yelled. 'Over a day . . .' He slammed down the receiver. Caron raised an eyebrow. 'The card,' explained Lebel wearily, 'has been in transit between Ventimiglia and Paris. They are now sorting out yesterday morning's entry cards from all over France. They say there are over twenty-five thousand of them. For one day, mark you. I suppose I shouldn't have yelled. At least we know one thing - he's here. Definitely. Inside France. If I don't have something for the meeting tonight they'll skin me. Oh, by the way, ring up Superintendent Thomas and thank him again. Tell him the Jackal is inside France, and we shall handle it from here.' As Caron replaced the receiver after the London call, the Service Regional headquarters of the PJ at Lyons came on the phone. Lebel listened, then glanced up at Caron triumphantly. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. 'We've got him. He's registered for two days at the Hotel du Cerf in Gap, starting last night.' He uncovered the mouthpiece and spoke down it. 'Now listen, Commissaire, I am not in a position to explain to you why we want this man Duggan. Just take it from me it is important. This is what I want you to do . . .' He spoke for ten minutes, and as he finished, the phone on Caron's desk rang. It was the DST again to say Duggan had entered France in a hired white Alfa Romeo sports two-seater, registration MI-61741. 'Shall I put out an all-stations alert for it?' asked Caron. Lebel thought for a moment.","'No, not yet. If he's out motoring in the countryside somewhere he'll probably be picked up by a country cop who thinks he's just looking for a stolen sports car. He'll kill anybody who tries to intercept him. The gun must be in the car somewhere. The important thing is that he's booked into the hotel for two nights. I want an army round that hotel when he gets back. Nobody must get hurt if it can be avoided. Come on, if we want to get that helicopter, let's go.' While he was speaking the entire police force at Gap was moving steel road blocks into position on all the exits from the town and the area of the hotel and posting men in the undergrowth round the barriers. Their orders came from Lyons. At Grenoble and Lyons men armed with submachine guns and rifles were clambering into two fleets of Black Marias. At Satory Camp outside Paris a helicopter was being made ready for Commissaire Lebel's flight to Gap. Even in the shade of the trees the heat of early afternoon was sweltering. Stripped to the waist to avoid staining more of his clothes than was necessary, the Jackal worked on the car for two hours. After leaving Gap he had headed due west through Veyne and Aspres-sur-Buech. It was downhill most of the way, the road winding between the mountains like a carelessly discarded ribbon. He had pushed the car to the limit, hurling it into the tight bends on squealing tyres, twice nearly sending another driver coming the other way over the edge into one of the chasms below. After Aspres he picked up the RN93 which followed the course of the Drome river eastwards to join the Rhone. For another eighteen miles the road had hunted back and forth across the river. Shortly after Luc-en-Diois he had thought it time to get the Alfa off the road. There were plenty of side roads leading away into the hills and the upland villages. He had taken one at random and after a mile and half chosen a path to the right leading into the woods. In the middle of the afternoon he had finished painting and stood back. The car was a deep gleaming blue, most of the paint already dry. Although by no means a professional painting job, it would pass muster except if given a close inspection, and particularly in the dusk. The two number plates had been unscrewed and lay face","down on the grass. On the back of each had been painted in white an imaginary French number of which the last two letters were 75, the registration code for Paris. The Jackal knew this was the commonest type of car number on the roads of France. The car's hiring and insurance papers evidently did not match the blue French Alfa as they had the white Italian one, and if he were stopped for a road check, without papers, he was done for. The only question in his mind as he dipped a rag in the petrol tank and wiped the paint stains off his hands was whether to start motoring now and risk the bright sunlight showing up the amateurishness of the paintwork on the car, or whether to wait until dusk. He estimated that with his false name once discovered, his point of entry into France would follow not long behind, and with it a search for the car. He was days too early for the assassination, and he needed to find a place to lie low until he was ready. That meant getting to the department of Correze two hundred and fifty miles across country, and the quickest way was by using the car. It was a risk, but he decided it had to be taken. Very well, then, the sooner the better, before every speed cop in the country was looking for an Alfa Romeo with a blond Englishman at the wheel. He screwed the new number plates on, threw away what remained of the paint and the two brushes, pulled back on his polo-necked silk sweater and jacket, and gunned the engine into life. As he swept back on to the RN93 he checked his watch. It was 3.41 in the afternoon. High overhead he watched a helicopter clattering on its way towards the east. It was seven miles further to the village of Die. He knew well enough not to pronounce it in the English way, but the coincidence of the name occurred to him. He was not superstitious, but his eyes narrowed as he drove into the centre of the town. At the main square near the war memorial a huge black-leather-coated motorcycle policeman was standing in the middle of the road waving him to stop and pull in to the extreme right-hand side of the road. His gun, he knew, was still in its tubes wired to the chassis of the car. He carried no automatic or knife. For a second he hesitated, unsure whether to hit the policeman a glancing blow with the wing of the car and keep driving, later to abandon the car a dozen miles further on","and try without a mirror or a wash-basin to transform himself into Pastor Jensen, with four pieces of luggage to cope with, or whether to stop. It was the policeman who made the decision for him. Ignoring him completely as the Alfa began to slow down, the policeman turned round and scanned the road in the other direction. The Jackal slid the car into the side of the road, watched and waited. From the far side of the village he heard the wailing of sirens. Whatever happened, it was too late to get out now. Into the village came a convoy of four Citroen police cars and six Black Marias. As the traffic cop jumped to one side and swept his arm up in salute, the convoy raced past the parked Alfa and headed down the road from which he had come. Through the wired windows of the vans, which give them the French nickname of salad-baskets, he could see the rows of helmeted police, submachine guns across their knees. Almost as soon as it had come, the convoy was gone. The speed cop brought his arm down from the salute, gave the Jackal an indolent gesture that he could now proceed, and stalked off to his motor-cycle parked against the war memorial. He was still kicking the starter when the blue Alfa disappeared round the corner heading west. It was 4.50 p.m. when they hit the Hotel du Cerf. Claude Lebel, who had landed a mile on the other side of the township and had been driven to the driveway of the hotel in a police car, walked up to the front door accompanied by Caron who carried a loaded and cocked MAT 49 submachine carbine under the mackintosh slung over his right arm. The forefinger was on the trigger. Everyone in the town knew there was something afoot by this time, except the proprietor of the hotel. It had been isolated for five hours, and the only odd thing had been the non-arrival of the trout-seller with his day's catch of fresh fish. Summoned by the desk clerk, the proprietor appeared from his labours over the accounts in the office. Lebel listened to him answer Caron's questions, glancing nervously at the odd-shaped bundle under Caron's arm, and his shoulders sagged.","Five minutes later the hotel was deluged with uniformed police. They interviewed the staff, examined the bedroom, chased through the grounds. Lebel walked alone out into the drive and stared up at the surrounding hills. Caron joined him. 'You think he's really gone, chief?' Lebel nodded. 'He's gone all right.' 'But he was booked in for two days. Do you think the proprietor's in this with him?' 'No. He and the staff aren't lying. He changed his mind some time this morning. And he left. The question now is where the hell has he gone, and does he suspect yet that we know who he is?' 'But how could he? He couldn't know that. It must be coincidence. It must be.' 'My dear Lucien, let us hope so.' 'All we've got to go on now, then, is the car number.' 'Yes. That was my mistake. We should have put the alert out for the car. Get on to the police R\/T to Lyons from one of the squad cars and make it an all-stations alert. Top priority. White Alfa Romeo, Italian, Number MI-61741. Approach with caution, occupant believed armed and dangerous. You know the drill. But one more thing, nobody is to mention it to the Press. Include in the message the instruction that the suspected man probably does not know he's suspected, and I'll skin anybody who lets him hear it on the radio or read it in the Press. I'm going to tell Commissaire Gaillard of Lyons to take over here. Then let's get back to Paris.' It was nearly six o'clock when the blue Alfa coasted into the town of Valence where the steel torrent of the Route Nationale Seven, the main road from Lyons to Marseilles and the highway carrying most of the traffic from Paris to the Cote d'Azur, thunders along the banks of the Rhone. The Alfa crossed the great road running south and took the bridge over the river towards the RN533 to St Peray on the western bank. Below the bridge the mighty river smouldered in the afternoon sunlight, ignored the puny steel insects scurrying southwards and rolled at its own leisurely but certain pace towards the waiting Mediterranean.","After St Peray, as dusk settled on the valley behind him, the Jackal gunned the little sports car higher and higher into the mountains of the Massif Central and the province of Auvergne. After Le Puy the going got steeper, the mountains higher and every town seemed to be a watering spa where the life-giving streams flowing out from the rocks of the massif had attracted those with aches and eczemas developed in the cities and made fortunes for the cunning Avergnat peasants who had gone into the spa business with a will. After Brioude the valley of the Allier river dropped behind, and the smell in the night air was of heather and drying hay in the upland pastures. He stopped to fill the tank at Issoire, then sped on through the casino town of Mont Dore and the spa of La Bourdoule. It was nearly midnight when he rounded the headwaters of the Dordogne, where it rises among the Auvergne rocks to flow south and west through half a dozen dams and spend itself into the Atlantic at Bordeaux. From La Bourdoule he took the RN89 towards Ussel, the county town of Correze. 'You are a fool, Monsieur le Commissaire, a fool. You had him within your grasp, and you let him slip.' Saint-Clair had half-risen to his feet to make his point, and glared down the polished mahogany table at the top of Lebel's head. The detective was studying the papers of his dossier, for all the world as if Saint-Clair did not exist. He had decided that was the only way to treat the arrogant colonel from the Palace, and Saint-Clair for his part was not quite sure whether the bent head indicated an appropriate sense of shame or an insolent indifference. He preferred to believe it was the former. When he had finished and sank back into his seat, Claude Lebel looked up. 'If you will look at the mimeographed report in front of you, my dear Colonel, you will observe that we did not have him in our hands,' he observed mildly. 'The report from Lyons that a man in the name of Duggan had registered the previous evening at a hotel in Gap did not reach the PJ until 12.15 today. We now know that the Jackal left the hotel abruptly at 11.05. Whatever measures had been taken, he still had an hour's start.","'Moreover, I cannot accept your strictures on the efficiency of the police forces of this country in general. I would remind you that the orders of the President are that this affair will be managed in secret. It was therefore not possible to put out an alert to every rural gendarmerie for a man named Duggan for it would have started a hullabaloo in the Press. The card registering Duggan at the Hotel du Cerf was collected in the normal way at the normal time, and sent with due dispatch to Regional Headquarters at Lyons. Only there was it realized that Duggan was a wanted man. This delay was unavoidable, unless we wish to launch a nation-wide hue-and-cry for the man, and that is outside my brief. 'And, lastly, Duggan was registered at the hotel for two days. We do not know what made him change his mind at 11 a.m. today and decide to move elsewhere.' 'Probably your police gallivanting about the place,' snapped Saint- Clair. 'I have already made it plain, there was no gallivanting before 12.15 and the man was already seventy minutes gone,' said Lebel. 'All right, we have been unlucky, very unlucky,' cut in the Minister. 'However there is still the question of why no immediate search for the car was instituted. Commissaire?' 'I agree it was a mistake, Minister, in the light of events. I had reason to believe the man was at the hotel and intended to spend the night there. If he had been motoring in the vicinity, and had been intercepted by a motor-patrol man for driving a wanted car, he would almost certainly have shot the unsuspecting policeman, and thus forewarned made his escape . . .' 'Which is precisely what he has done,' said Saint-Xavier. 'True, but we have no evidence to suggest that he has been forewarned, as he would have been if his car had been stopped by a single patrolman. It may well be he just decided to move on somewhere else. If so, and if he checks into another hotel tonight, he will be reported. Alternately, if his car is seen he will be reported.' 'When did the alert for the white Alfa go out?' asked the director of the PJ, Max Fernet. 'I issued the instructions at 5.15 p.m. from the courtyard of the hotel,' replied Lebel. 'It should have reached all major road-patrol","units by seven, and the police on duty in the main towns should be informed throughout the night as they check in for night duty. In view of the danger of this man, I have listed the car as stolen, with instructions that its presence be reported immediately to the Regional HQ but that no approach should be made to the occupant by a lone policeman. If this meeting decides to change these orders, then I must ask that the responsibility for what may ensue be taken by this meeting.' There was a long silence. 'Regrettably, the life of a police officer cannot be allowed to stand in the way of protecting the President of France,' murmured Colonel Rolland. There were signs of assent from round the table. 'Perfectly true,' assented Lebel. 'Providing a single police officer can stop this man. But most town and country policemen, the ordinary men on the beat and the motor patrolmen, are not professional gunfighters. This Jackal is. If he is intercepted, shoots down one or two policemen, makes another getaway and disappears, we shall have two things to cope with: one will be a killer fully forewarned and perhaps able to adopt yet a new identity about which we know nothing, the other will be a nation-wide headline story in every newspaper which we will not be able to play down. If the Jackal's real reason for being in France remains a secret for forty-eight hours after the killing story breaks, I will be most surprised. The Press will know within days that he is after the President. If anyone here would like to explain that to the General, I will willingly retire from this investigation and hand it over.' No one volunteered. The meeting broke up as usual around midnight. Within thirty minutes it had become Friday, 16th August.","","CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The blue Alfa Romeo cruised into the Place de la Gare at Ussel just before one in the morning. There was one cafe remaining open across the square from the station entrance, and a few late-night travellers waiting for a train were sipping coffee. The Jackal dragged a comb through his hair and walked past the stacked-up chairs and tables on the terrace and up to the bar counter. He was cold, for the mountain air was chill when driving at over sixty miles an hour; and stiff, with aching thighs and arms from hauling the Alfa through innumerable mountain curves; and hungry, for he had not eaten since dinner twenty-eight hours previously, apart from a buttered roll for breakfast. He ordered two large buttered slices of a long thin loaf, sliced down the middle and known as a tartine beurree and four hard- boiled eggs from the stand on the counter. Also a large white coffee. While the buttered bread was being prepared and the coffee was percolating through the filter, he glanced round for the telephone booth. There was none, but a telephone stood at the end of the counter. 'Have you got the local telephone directory?' he asked the barman. Without a word, still busy, the barman gestured to a pile of directories on a rack behind the counter. 'Help yourself,' he said. The Baron's name was listed under the words 'Chalonniere, M. le Baron de la . . .' and the address was the chateau at La Haute Chalonniere. The Jackal knew this, but the village was not listed on his road map. However, the telephone number was given as Egletons, and he found this easily enough. It was another thirty kilometres beyond Ussel on the RN89. He settled down to eat his eggs and sandwiches. It was just before two in the morning that he passed a stone by the roadside saying 'Egletons, 6 km' and decided to abandon the car in one of the forests that bordered the road. They were dense woods, probably the estate of some local noble, where once boars had been","hunted with horse and hound. Perhaps they still were, for parts of Correze seem to have stepped straight from the days of Louis the Sun King. Within a few hundred metres he had found a drive leading into the forest, separated from the road by a wooden pole slung across the entrance, adorned by a placard saying 'Chasse Privee.' He removed the pole, drove the car into the wood and replaced the pole. From there he drove half a mile into the forest, the head-lamps lighting the gnarled shapes of the trees like ghosts reaching down with angry branches at the trespasser. Finally he stopped the car, switched off the headlights, and took the wire-cutters and torch from the glove compartment. He spent an hour underneath the vehicle, his back getting damp from the dew on the forest floor. At last the steel tubes containing the sniper's rifle were free from their hiding place of the previous sixty hours, and he re-packed them in the suitcase with the old clothes and the army greatcoat. He had a last look round the car to make sure there was nothing left in it that could give anyone who found it a hint of who its driver had been, and drove it hard into the centre of a nearby clump of wild rhododendron. Using the metal shears, he spent the next hour cutting rhododendron branches from nearby bushes and jabbing them into the ground in front of the hole in the shrubbery made by the Alfa, until it was completely hidden from view. He knotted his tie with one end round the handle of one of the suitcases, the other end round the handle of the second case. Using the tie like a railway porter's strap, his shoulder under the loop so that one case hung down his chest and the other down his back, he was able to grab the remaining two pieces of baggage in his two free hands and start the march back to the road. It was slow going. Every hundred yards he stopped, put the cases down and went back over his tracks with a branch from a tree, sweeping away the light impressions made in the moss and twigs by the passage of the Alfa. It took another hour to reach the road, duck under the pole, and put half a mile between himself and the entrance to the forest.","His check suit was soiled and grimy, the polo sweater stuck to his back with greasy obstinacy, and he thought his muscles would never stop aching again. Lining the suitcases up in a row, he sat down to wait as the eastern sky grew a fraction paler than the surrounding night. Country buses, he reminded himself, tend to start early. In fact he was lucky. A farm lorry towing a trailer of hay came by at 5.50 heading towards the market town. 'Car broken down?' bawled the driver as he slowed up. 'No. I've got a weekend pass from camp, so I'm hitchhiking home. Got as far as Ussel last night and decided to push on to Tulle. I've got an uncle there who can fix me a lorry to Bordeaux. This was as far as I got.' He grinned at the driver, who laughed and shrugged. 'Crazy, walking through the night up here. No one comes this way after dark. Jump on the trailer, I'll take you in to Egletons, you can try from there.' They rolled into the little town at quarter to seven. The Jackal thanked the farmer, gave him the slip round the back of the station and headed for a cafe. 'Is there a taxi in town?' he asked the barman over coffee. The barman gave him the number and he rang to call up the taxi company. There was one car that would be available in half an hour, he was told. While he waited he used the fundamental conveniences of the cold-water tap offered by the cafe's lavatory to wash his face and hands, change into a fresh suit and brush his teeth which felt furry from cigarettes and coffee. The taxi arrived at 7.30, an old rattletrap Renault. 'Do you know the village of Haute Chalonniere?' he asked the driver. ''Course.' 'How far?' 'Eighteen kilometres.' The man jerked his thumb up towards the mountains. 'In the hills.' 'Take me there,' said the Jackal, and hefted his luggage on to the roof rack, except for one case that went inside with him. He insisted on being dropped in front of the Cafe de la Poste in the village square. There was no need for the taxi-driver from the nearby town to know he was going to the chateau. When the taxi had driven","away he brought his luggage into the cafe. Already the square was blazing hot, and two oxen yoked to a hay-cart ruminated their cud reflectively outside while fat black flies promenaded round their gentle patient eyes. Inside the cafe it was dark and cool. He heard rather than saw the customers shift at their tables to examine the newcomer, and there was a clacking of clogs on tiles as an old peasant woman in a black dress left one group of farm workers and went behind the bar. 'Monsieur?' she croaked. He put down the luggage and leaned on the bar. The locals, he noticed, were drinking red wine. 'Un gros rouge, s'il vous plait, madame.' 'How far is the chateau, madame,' he asked when the wine was poured. She eyed him keenly from wily black marbles. 'Two kilometres, monsieur.' He sighed wearily. 'That fool of a driver tried to tell me there was no chateau here. So he dropped me in the square.' 'He was from Egletons?' she asked. The Jackal nodded. 'They are fools at Egletons,' she said. 'I have to get to the chateau,' he said. The ring of peasants watching from their tables made no move. No one suggested how he might get there. He pulled out a new hundred-franc note. 'How much is the wine, madame?' She eyed the note sharply. There was a shifting among the blue cotton blouses and trousers behind him. 'I haven't got change for that,' said the old woman. He sighed. 'If only there were someone with a van, he might have change,' he said. Someone got up and approached from behind. 'There is a van in the village, monsieur,' growled a voice. The Jackal turned with mock surprise. 'It belongs to you, mon ami?' 'No, monsieur, but I know the man who owns it. He might run you up there.' The Jackal nodded as if considering the merits of the idea.","'In the meantime, what will you take?' The peasant nodded at the crone, who poured another large glass of rough red wine. 'And your friends? It's a hot day. A thirsty day.' The stubbled face split into a smile. The peasant nodded again to the woman who took two full bottles over to the group round the big table. 'Benoit, go and get the van,' ordered the peasant, and one of the men, gulping down his wine in one swallow, went outside. The advantage of the peasantry of the Auvergne, it would seem, mused the Jackal, as he rattled and bumped the last two kilometres up to the chateau, is that they are so surly they keep their damn mouths shut - at least to outsiders. Colette de la Chalonniere sat up in bed, sipped her coffee and read the letter again. The anger that had possessed her on the first reading had dissipated, to be replaced by a kind of weary disgust. She wondered what on earth she could do with the rest of her life. She had been welcomed home the previous afternoon after a leisurely drive from Gap by old Ernestine, the maid who had been in service at the chateau since Alfred's father's day, and the gardener, Louison, a former peasant boy who had married Ernestine when she was still an under housemaid. The pair were now virtually the curators of the chateau of which two-thirds of the rooms were shut off and blanketed in dust covers. She was, she realized, the mistress of an empty castle where there were no children playing in the park any more, nor a master of the household saddling his horse in the courtyard. She looked back at the cutting from the Paris glossy society magazine that her friend had so thoughtfully mailed to her; at the face of her husband grinning inanely into the flash-bulb, eyes torn between the lens of the camera and the jutting bosom of the starlet over whose shoulder he was peering. A cabaret dancer, risen from bar hostess, quoted as saying she hoped 'one day' to be able to marry the Baron, who was her 'very good friend'. Looking at the lined face and scrawny neck of the ageing Baron in the photograph, she wondered vaguely what had happened to the handsome young captain of the Resistance partisans with whom she","had fallen in love in 1942 and married a year later when she was expecting her son. She had been a teenage girl, running messages for the Resistance, when she met him in the mountains. He had been in his mid-thirties, known by the code-name of Pegasus, a lean, hawk- faced commanding man who had turned her heart. They had been married in a secret ceremony in a cellar chapel by a priest of the Resistance, and she had borne her son in her father's house. Then after the war had come the restoration of all his lands and properties. His father had died of a heart attack when the Allied armies swept across France, and he had emerged from the heather to become the Baron of Chalonniere, cheered by the peasantry of the countryside as he brought his wife and son back to the chateau. Soon the estates had tired him, the lure of Paris and the lights of the cabarets, the urge to make up for the lost years of his manhood in the undergrowth had proved too strong to resist. Now he was fifty-seven and could have passed for seventy. The Baroness threw the cutting and its accompanying letter on the floor. She jumped out of bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror on the far wall, pulling open the laces that held the peignoir together down the front. She stood on tiptoe to tighten the muscles of her thighs as a pair of high-heeled shoes would do. Not bad, she thought. Could be a lot worse. A full figure, the body of a mature woman. The hips were wide, but the waist had mercifully remained in proportion, firmed by hours in the saddle and long walks in the hills. She cupped her breasts one in each hand and measured their weight. Too big, too heavy for real beauty, but still enough to excite a man in bed. Well, Alfred, two can play at that game, she thought. She shook her head, loosening the shoulder-length black hair so that a strand fell forward by her cheek and lay across one of her breasts. She took her hands away and ran them between her thighs, thinking of the man who had been there just over twenty-four hours before. He had been good. She wished now she had stayed on at Gap. Perhaps they could have holidayed together, driving round using a false name, like runaway lovers. What on earth had she come home for?","There was a clatter of an old van drawing up in the courtyard. Idly she drew the peignoir together and walked to the window that gave on to the front of the house. A van from the village was parked there, the rear doors open. Two men were at the back taking something down from the tail-board. Louison was walking across from where he had been weeding one of the ornamental lawns to help carry the load. One of the men hidden behind the van walked round to the front, stuffing some paper into his trouser pocket, climbed into the driving seat and engaged the grinding clutch. Who was delivering things to the chateau? She had not ordered anything. The van started to pull away and she gave a start in surprise. There were three suitcases and a hand-grip on the gravel, beside them was a man. She recognized the gleam of the blond hair in the sun and smiled wide with pleasure. 'You animal. You beautiful primitive animal. You followed me.' She hurried into the bathroom to dress. When she came on to the landing she caught the sound of voices in the hall below. Ernestine was asking what Monsieur wanted. 'Madame la Baronne, elle est la?' In a moment Ernestine came hurrying up the stairs as fast as her old legs would carry her. 'A gentleman has called, ma'am.' The evening meeting in the Ministry that Friday was shorter than usual. The only thing to report was that there was nothing. For the past twenty-four hours the description of the wanted car had been circulated in a routine manner, so as not to arouse undue suspicion, throughout France. It had not been spotted. Similarly every Regional Headquarters of the Police Judiciaire had ordered its dependent local commissariats in town and country to get all hotel registration cards into HQ by eight in the morning at the latest. At the Regional HQs they were immediately scoured, tens of thousands of them, for the name of Duggan. Nothing had been spotted. Therefore, he had not stayed last night in a hotel, at least, not in the name of Duggan. 'We have to accept one of two premises,' explained Lebel to a silent gathering. 'Either he still believes he is unsuspected, in other words his departure from the Hotel du Cerf was an unpremeditated","action and a coincidence; in which case there is no reason for him not to use his Alfa Romeo openly and stay openly in hotels under the name of Duggan. In that case he must be spotted sooner or later. In the second case he has decided to ditch the car somewhere and abandon it, and rely on his own resources. In the latter case, there are a further two possibilities. 'Either he has no further false identities on which to rely; in which case he cannot get far without registering at a hotel or trying to pass a frontier point on his way out of France. Or he has another identity and has passed into it. In the latter case he is still extremely dangerous.' 'What makes you think he might have another identity?' asked Colonel Rolland. 'We have to assume,' said Lebel, 'that this man, having been offered evidently a very large sum by the OAS to carry out this assassination, must be one of the best professional killers in the world. That implies that he has had experience. And yet he has managed to stay clear of any official suspicion, and all official police dossiers. The only way he could do this would be by carrying out his assignments in a false name and with a false appearance. In other words, an expert in disguise as well. 'We know from the comparison of the two photographs that Calthrop was able to extend his height by high-heeled shoes, slim off several kilos in weight, change his eye colour by contact lenses and his hair colour with dye to become Duggan. If he can do that once, we cannot afford the luxury of assuming he cannot do it again.' 'But there's no reason to suppose he suspected he would be exposed before he got close to the President,' protested Saint-Clair. 'Why should he take such elaborate precautions as to have one or more false identities?' 'Because,' said Lebel, 'he apparently does take elaborate precautions. If he did not, we should have had him by now.' 'I note from Calthrop's dossier, as passed on by the British police, that he did his National Service just after the war in the parachute regiment. Perhaps he's using this experience to live rough, hiding out in the hills,' suggested Max Fernet. 'Perhaps,' agreed Lebel.","'In that case he is more or less finished as a potential danger.' Lebel considered for a moment. 'Of this particular person, I would not like to say that until he is behind bars.' 'Or dead,' said Rolland. 'If he's got any sense, he'll be trying to get out of France while he's still alive,' said Saint-Clair. On that note the meeting broke up. 'I wish I could count on that,' Lebel told Caron back in the office. 'But as far as I'm concerned he's alive, well, free and armed. We keep on looking for him and that car. He had three pieces of luggage, he can't have got far on foot with all that. Find that car and we start from there.' The man they wanted was lying on fresh linen in a chateau in the heart of Correze. He was bathed and relaxed, filled with a meal of country pate and jugged hare, washed down with rough red wine, black coffee and brandy. He stared up at the gilt curlicues that writhed across the ceiling and planned the course of the days that now separated him from his assignment in Paris. In a week, he thought, he would have to move, and getting away might prove difficult. But it could be done. He would have to think out a reason for going. The door opened and the Baroness came in. Her hair had been let down around her shoulders and she wore a peignoir held together at the throat but open down the front. As she moved it swayed briefly open. She was quite naked beneath it, but had kept on the stockings she had worn at dinner and the high-heeled court shoes. The Jackal propped himself up on one elbow as she closed the door and walked over to the bed. She looked down at him in silence. He reached up and slipped loose the bow of ribbon that held the nightdress closed at the throat. It swung open to reveal the breasts, and as he craned forward his hand slid the lace-edged material off her shoulders. It slid down to the floor without a sound. She pushed his shoulder so that he rolled back on to the bed, then gripped his wrists and pinned them against the pillow as she climbed","over him. He stared back up at her as she knelt above him, her thighs gripping his ribs hard. She smiled down at him, two curling strands of hair falling down to the nipples. 'Bon, my primitif, now let's see you perform.' He eased his head forward as her bottom rose off his chest, and started. For three days the trail went cold for Lebel, and at each evening meeting the volume of opinion that the Jackal had left France secretly with his tail between his legs increased. By the meeting on the evening of the 19th he was alone in maintaining his view that the killer was still somewhere in France, lying low and biding his time, waiting. 'Waiting for what?' shrilled Saint-Clair that evening. 'The only thing he can be waiting for, if he is still here, is an opportunity to make a dash for the border. The moment he breaks cover we have got him. He has every man's arm against him, nowhere to go, no one to take him in, if your supposition that he is completely cut off from the OAS and their sympathizers is correct.' There was a murmur of assent from the table, most of whose members were beginning to harden in their opinion that the police had failed, and that Bouvier's original dictum that the location of the killer was a purely detective task had been wrong. Lebel shook his head doggedly. He was tired, exhausted by lack of sleep, by strain and worry, by having to defend himself and his staff from the constant needling attacks of men who owed their exalted positions to politics rather than experience. He had enough sense to realize that if he was wrong, he was finished. Some of the men round the table would see to that. And if he was right? If the Jackal was still on the trail of the President? If he slipped through the net and closed with his victim? He knew those round the table would desperately seek for a scapegoat. And it would be him. Either way his long career as a policeman was ended. Unless . . . unless he could find the man and stop him. Only then would they have to concede that he had been right. But he had no proof; only an odd faith, that he could certainly never divulge, that the man he was","hunting was another professional who would carry out his job no matter what. Over the eight days since this affair had landed on his lap he had come to a grudging respect for the silent unpredictable man with the gun who seemed to have everything planned down to the last detail, including the contingency planning. It was as much as his career was worth to admit his feelings amidst the gathering of political appointees around him. Only the massive bulk of Bouvier beside him, hunching his head into his shoulders and glaring at the table, gave him a small comfort. At least he was another detective. 'Waiting for I don't know what,' Lebel replied. 'But he's waiting for something, or some appointed day. I do not believe gentlemen, that we have heard the last of the Jackal yet. All the same, I cannot explain why I feel this.' 'Feelings!' jeered Saint-Clair. 'Some appointed day!! Really, Commissaire, you seem to have been reading too many romantic thrillers. This is no romance, my dear sir, this is reality. The man has gone, that's all there is to it.' He sat back with a self-assured smile. 'I hope you are right,' said Lebel quietly. 'In that case, I must tender to you, Monsieur le Ministre, my willingness to withdraw from the enquiry and return to the investigation of crime.' The Minister eyed him with indecision. 'Do you think the enquiry is worth pursuing, Commissaire?' he asked. 'Do you think a real danger still subsists?' 'As to the second question, sir, I do not know. For the former, I believe we should go on looking until we are absolutely certain.' 'Very well then. Gentlemen, it is my wish that the Commissaire continue his enquiries, and that we continue our evening meetings to hear his reports - for the moment.' On the morning of 20th August Marcange Callet, a gamekeeper, was shooting vermin on the estates of his employer between Egletons and Ussel in the department of Correze when he pursued a wounded wood-pigeon that had tumbled into a clump of wild rhododendron. In the centre of the clump he found the pigeon, fluttering madly on the driving seat of an open sports car that had evidently been abandoned.","At first he thought as he wrung the bird's neck that it must have been parked by a pair of lovers who had come into the forest for a picnic, despite the warning notice that he had nailed up on the pole at the entrance to the woods half a mile away. Then he noticed that some of the branches of shrubbery that concealed the car from view were not growing in the ground but had been jabbed into the earth. Further examination showed the cut stumps of the branches on other nearby bushes, the white cuts having been smeared over with earth to darken them. From the bird droppings on the seats of the car he reckoned it had been there for several days at least. Taking his gun and bird he cycled back through the woods to his cottage, making a mental note to mention the car to the local village constable when he went into the village later that morning to buy some more rabbit snares. It was nearly noon when the village policeman wound up the hand- cranked telephone in his house and filed a report to the commissariat at Ussel to the effect that a car had been found abandoned in the woods nearby. Was it a white car, he was asked. He consulted his notebook. No, it was a blue car. Was it Italian? No, it was French-registered, make unknown. Right, said the voice from Ussel, a towaway truck will be sent during the afternoon, and he had better be ready waiting to guide the crew to the spot, because there was a lot of work on and everyone was short-staffed, what with a search going on for a white Italian sports car that the bigwigs in Paris wanted to have a look at. The village constable promised to be ready and waiting when the towaway truck arrived. It was not until after four that afternoon that the little car was towed into the pound at Ussel, and close to five before one of the motor maintenance staff, giving the car a check over for identification, noticed that the paintwork was appallingly badly done. He took out a screwdriver and scratched at one of the wings. Under the blue, a streak of white appeared. Perplexed, he examined the number plates, and noticed that they seemed to have been reversed. A few minutes later the front plate was lying in the courtyard face up, exhibiting white lettering MI-61741, and the policeman was hurrying across the yard towards the office.","Claude Lebel got the news just before six. It came from Commissaire Valentin of the Regional Headquarters of the PJ at Clermont Ferrand, capital of the Auvergne. Lebel jerked upright in his chair as Valentin's voice started talking. 'Right, listen, this is important. I can't explain why it's important, I can only say that it is. Yes, I know it's irregular, but that's the way it is. I know you're a full Commissaire, my dear chap, but if you want confirmation of my authority in this case I'll pass you right on to the Director-General of the PJ. 'I want you to get a team down to Ussel now. The best you can get, and as many men as you can get. Start enquiring from the spot where the car was found. Mark off the map with that spot in the centre and prepare for a square search. Ask at every farmhouse, every farmer who regularly drives along that road, every village store and cafe, every hotel and wood-cutter's shack. 'You are looking for a tall blond man, English by birth but speaking good French. He was carrying three suitcases and a hand-grip. He carries a lot of money in cash and is well dressed, but probably looking as if he had slept rough. 'Your men must ask where he was, where he went, what he tried to buy. Oh, and one other thing, the Press must be kept out at all costs. What do you mean, they can't? Well of course the local stringers will ask what goes on. Well, tell them there was a car crash and it's thought one of the occupants might be wandering in a dazed state. Yes, all right, a mission of mercy. Anything, just allay their suspicions. Tell them there's no story the national papers would bother to pay for, not in the holiday season with five hundred road accidents a day. Just play it down. And one last thing, if you locate the man holed up somewhere, don't get near him. Just surround him and keep him there. I'll be down as soon as I can.' Lebel put the phone down and turned to Caron. 'Get on to the Minister. Ask him to bring the evening meeting forward to eight o'clock. I know that's supper-time, but it will only be short. Then get on to Satory and get the helicopter again. A night flight to Ussel, and they'd better tell us where they will be landing so we can get a car laid on to pick me up. You'll have to take over here.'","The police vans from Clermont Ferrand, backed up by others contributed by Ussel, set up their headquarters in the village square of the tiny hamlet nearest to where the car had been found, just as the sun was setting. From the radio van Valentin issued instructions to the scores of squad cars converging on the other villages of the area. He had decided to start with a five-mile radius of the spot where the car was found, and work through the night. People were more likely to be home in the hours of darkness. On the other hand, in the twisting valleys and hillsides of the region, there was more chance that in the darkness his men would get lost, or overlook some small woodcutter's shack where the fugitive might be hiding. There was one other factor that he could not have explained to Paris over the phone, and which he dreaded having to explain to Lebel face to face. Unbeknown to him, some of his men came across this factor before midnight. A group of them were interviewing a farmer in his cottage two miles from the spot where the car was found. He stood in the doorway in his nightshirt, pointedly refusing to invite the detectives in. From his hand the paraffin lamp cast flickering splashes of light over the group. 'Come on, Gaston, you drive along that road to market pretty often. Did you drive down that road towards Egletons on Friday morning?' The peasant surveyed them through narrowed eyes. 'Might have done.' 'Well, did you or didn't you?' 'Can't remember.' 'Did you see a man on the road?' 'I mind my own business.' 'That's not what we're asking. Did you see a man?' 'I saw nobody, nothing.' 'A blond man, tall, athletic. Carrying three suitcases and a hand- grip?' 'I saw nothing. J'ai rien vu, tu comprends.' It went on for twenty minutes. At last they went, one of the detectives making a meticulous note in his book. The dogs snarled on the ends of their chains and snapped at the policemen's legs, causing them to skip to one side and step in the compost heap. The","peasant watched them until they were back on the road and jolting away in their car. Then he slammed the door, kicked an inquisitive goat out of the way and clambered back into bed with his wife. 'That was the fellow you gave a lift to, wasn't it?' she asked. 'What do they want with him?' 'Dunno,' said Gaston, 'but no one will ever say Gaston Grosjean helped give away another creature to them.' He hawked and spat into the embers of the fire. 'Sales flics.' He turned down the wick and blew out the light, swung his legs off the floor and pushed further into the cot against the ample form of his wife. 'Good luck to you, mate, wherever you are.' Lebel faced the meeting and put down his papers. 'As soon as this meeting is over, gentlemen, I am flying down to Ussel to supervise the search myself.' There was silence for nearly a minute. 'What do you think, Commissaire, that can be deduced from this?' 'Two things, Monsieur le Ministre. We know he must have bought paint to transform the car, and I suspect enquiries will show that if the car was driven through the night from Thursday into Friday morning from Gap to Ussel, that it was already transformed. In that case, and enquiries along these lines are proceeding, it would appear he bought the paint in Gap. If that is so, then he was tipped off. Either somebody rang him, or he rang somebody, either here or in London, who told him of the discovery of his pseudonym of Duggan. From that he could work out that we would be on to him before noon, and on to his car. So he got out, and fast.' He thought the elegant ceiling of the conference room was going to crack, so pressing was the silence. 'Are you seriously suggesting,' somebody asked from a million miles away, 'there is a leak from within this room?' 'I cannot say that, monsieur. There are switchboard operators, telex operators, middle and junior level executives to whom orders have to be passed. It could be that one of them is clandestinely an OAS agent. But one thing seems to emerge ever more clearly. He was tipped off about the unmasking of the overall plan to assassinate the President of France, and decided to go ahead","regardless. And he was tipped off about his unmasking as Alexander Duggan. He has after all got one single contact. I suspect it might be the man known as Valmy whose message to Rome was intercepted by the DST.' 'Damn,' swore the head of the DST, 'we should have got the blighter in the post office.' 'And what is the second thing we may deduce, Commissaire?' asked the Minister. 'The second thing is that when he learned he was blown as Duggan, he did not seek to quit France. On the contrary, he headed right into the centre of France. In other words, he is still on the trail of the head of state. He has simply challenged the whole lot of us.' The Minister rose and gathered his papers. 'We will not detain you, M. le Commissaire. Find him. Find him, and tonight. Dispose of him if you have to. Those are my orders, in the name of the President.' With that he stalked from the room. An hour later Lebel's helicopter lifted away from the take-off pad at Satory and headed through the purpling-black sky towards the south. 'Impertinent pig. How dare he. Suggesting that somehow we, the topmost officials of France, were at fault. I shall mention it, of course, in my next report.' Jacqueline eased the thin straps of her slip from her shoulders and let the transparent material fall to settle in folds round her hips. Tightening her biceps to push the breasts together with a deep cleavage down the middle, she took her lover's head and pulled it towards her bosom. 'Tell me all about it,' she cooed.","","CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The morning of 21st August was as bright and clear as the previous fourteen of that summer heat-wave had been. From the windows of the Chateau de la Haute Chalonniere, looking out over a rolling vista of heather-clad hills, it looked calm and peaceful, giving no hint of the tumult of police enquiries that was even then enveloping the town of Egletons eighteen kilometres away. The Jackal, naked under his dressing gown, stood at the windows of the Baron's study making his routine morning call to Paris. He had left his mistress asleep upstairs after another night of ferocious lovemaking. When the connection came through he began as usual 'Ici Chacal'. 'Ici Valmy,' said the husky voice at the other end. 'Things have started to move again. They have found the car . . .' He listened for another two minutes, interrupting only with a terse question. With a final 'merci' he replaced the receiver and fumbled in his pockets for cigarettes and lighter. What he had just heard, he realized, changed his plans whether he liked it or not. He had wanted to stay on at the chateau for another two days, but now he had to leave and the sooner the better. There was something else about the phone call that worried him, something that should not have been there. He had thought nothing of it at the time, but as he drew on his cigarette it niggled at the back of his mind. It came to him without effort as he finished the cigarette and threw the stub through the open window on to the gravel. There had been a soft click on the line soon after he had picked up the receiver. That had not happened during the phone calls over the past three days. There was an extension phone in the bedroom, but surely Colette had been fast asleep when he left her. Surely . . . He turned and strode briskly up the stairs on silent bare feet and burst into the bedroom. The phone had been replaced on its cradle. The wardrobe was open and the three suitcases lay about the floor, all open. His own keyring with the keys that opened the suitcases lay nearby. The","Baroness, on her knees amid the debris, looked up with wide staring eyes. Around her lay a series of slim steel tubes, from each of which the hessian caps that closed the open ends had been removed. From one emerged the end of a telescopic sight, from another the snout of the silencer. She held something in her hands, something she had been gazing at in horror when he entered. It was the barrel and breech of the gun. For several seconds neither spoke. The Jackal recovered first. 'You were listening.' 'I . . . wondered who you were phoning each morning like that.' 'I thought you were asleep.' 'No. I always wake when you get out of bed. This . . . thing; it's a gun, a killer's gun.' It was half question, half statement, but as if hoping he would explain that it was simply something else, something quite harmless. He looked down at her, and for the first time she noticed that the grey flecks in the eyes had spread and clouded over the whole expression, which had become dead and lifeless like a machine staring down at her. She rose slowly to her feet, dropping the gun barrel with a clatter among the other components. 'You want to kill him,' she whispered. 'You are one of them, the OAS. You want to use this to kill de Gaulle.' The lack of any answer from the Jackal gave her the answer. She made a rush for the door. He caught her easily and hurled her back across the room on to the bed, coming after her in three fast paces. As she bounced on the rumpled sheets her mouth opened to scream. The back-handed blow across the side of the neck into the cartoid artery choked off the scream at source, then his left hand was tangled in her hair, dragging her face downwards over the edge of the bed. She caught a last glimpse of the pattern of the carpet when the forehanded chop with the edge of the palm came down on the back of the neck. He went to the door to listen but no sound came from below. Ernestine would be preparing the morning rolls and coffee in the kitchen at the back of the house and Louison should be on his way to market shortly. Fortunately both were rather deaf.","He re-packed the parts of the rifle in their tubes and the tubes in the third suitcase with the army greatcoat and soiled clothes of Andre Martin, patting the lining to make sure the papers had not been disturbed. Then he locked the case. The second case, containing the clothes of the Danish pastor Per Jensen, was unlocked but had not been searched. He spent five minutes washing and shaving in the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. Then he took his scissors and spent a further ten minutes carefully combing the long blond hair upwards and snipping off the last two inches. Next he brushed into it enough of the hair tint to turn it into a middle-aged man's iron-grey. The effect of the dye was to dampen the hair, enabling him finally to brush it into the type shown in Pastor Jensen's passport, which he had propped on top of the bathroom shelf. Finally he slipped in the blue-tinted contact lenses. He wiped every trace of the hair tint and washing preparations off the washbasin, collected up the shaving things and returned to the bedroom. The naked body on the floor he ignored. He dressed in the vest, pants, socks and shirt he had bought in Copenhagen, fixed the black bib round his neck and topped it with the parson's dog collar. Finally he slipped on the black suit and conventional walking shoes. He tucked the gold-rimmed glasses into his top pocket, re-packed the washing things in the hand-grip and put the Danish book on French cathedrals in there as well. Into the inside pocket of his suit he transferred the Dane's passport, and a wad of money. The remainder of his English clothes went back into the suitcase from which they had come, and this too was finally locked. It was nearly eight when he finished and Ernestine would be coming up shortly with the morning coffee. The Baroness had tried to keep their affair from the servants, for both had doted on the Baron when he had been a small boy and later the master of the house. From the window he watched Louison cycle down the broad path that led towards the gates of the estate, his shopping pannier jolting along behind the bicycle. At that moment he heard Ernestine knock at the door. He made no sound. She knocked again.","'Y a vot' cafe, madame,' she shrilled through the closed door. Making up his mind, the Jackal called out in French, in a tone half asleep. 'Leave it there. We'll pick it up when we're ready.' Outside the door Ernestine's mouth formed a perfect 'O'. Scandalous. Whatever were things coming to . . . and in the Master's bedroom. She hurried downstairs to find Louison, but as he had left had to content herself with giving a lengthy lecture to the kitchen sink on the depravity of people nowadays, not at all like what the old Baron had been used to. So she did not hear the soft thud as four cases, lowered from the bedroom window on a looped sheet, plumped into the flower-bed on the front of the house. Nor did she hear the bedroom door locked from the inside, the limp body of her mistress arranged in a natural sleeping position on the bed with the clothes tucked up to the chin, the snap of the bedroom window as it shut behind the grey-haired man crouching outside on the sill, nor the thud as he dropped in a clean fall down to the lawn. She did hear the roar as Madame's Renault was gunned into life in the converted stable at the side of the chateau and peering through the scullery window she caught a glimpse as it swung round into the driveway leading to the front courtyard and away down the drive. 'Now what is that young lady up to?' she muttered as she scuttled back upstairs. In front of the bedroom door the tray of coffee was still lukewarm but untouched. After knocking several times, she tried the door but it would not open. The gentleman's bedroom door was also locked. Nobody would answer her. Ernestine decided there were goings-on, the sort of goings-on that had not happened since the Boche came to stay as guests of the unwilling Baron back in the old days and ask him silly questions about the Young Master. She decided to consult Louison. He would be at market, and someone in the local cafe would go to fetch him. She did not understand the telephone, but believed that if you picked it up people spoke to you and went and found the person you really wanted to speak to. But it was all nonsense. She picked it up and held it for ten minutes but no one spoke to her. She failed to notice the neat slice through the cord where it joined the skirting board of the library.","Claude Lebel took the helicopter back to Paris shortly after breakfast. As he said later to Caron, Valentin had been doing a first- class job, despite the obstructions of those damned peasants. By breakfast time he had traced the Jackal to a cafe in Egletons where he had had breakfast, and was looking for a taxi-driver who had been summoned. Meanwhile he had arranged for road blocks to be erected in a twenty-kilometre radius around Egletons, and they should be in place by midday. Because of the calibre of Valentin he had given him a hint of the importance of finding the Jackal, and Valentin had agreed to put a ring round Egletons, in his own words 'tighter than a mouse's arsehole'. From Haute Chalonniere the little Renault sped off through the mountains heading south towards Tulle. The Jackal estimated that if the police had been enquiring since the previous evening in ever- widening circles from where the Alfa had been found they must have reached Egletons by dawn. The cafe barman would talk, the taxi- driver would talk, and they would be at the chateau by the afternoon, unless he had a lucky break. But even then they would be looking for a blond Englishman, for he had taken good care that no one had seen him as a grey-haired priest. All the same, it was going to be a close-run thing. He whipped the little car through the mountain byways, finally emerging on to the RN8 eighteen kilometres south-west of Egletons on the road to Tulle, which lay another twenty kilometres ahead. He checked his watch: twenty to ten. As he vanished round a bend at the end of a stretch of straight, a small convoy came buzzing down from Egletons. It comprised a police squad car and two closed vans. The convoy stopped in the middle of the straight, and six policemen started to erect a steel road block. 'What do you mean, he's out?' roared Valentin to the weeping wife of a taxi-driver in Egletons. 'Where did he go?' 'I don't know, monsieur. I don't know. He waits every morning at the station square when the morning train comes in from Ussel. If there are no passengers he comes back here to the garage and gets on","with some repair work. If he does not come back it means he has picked up a fare.' Valentin looked around gloomily. It was no use bawling out the woman. It was a one-man taxi business run by a fellow who also did a bit of repair work on cars. 'Did he take anyone anywhere on Friday morning?' he asked, more patiently. 'Yes, monsieur. He had come back from the station because there was no one there, and a call from the cafe that somebody there wanted a taxi. He had got one of the wheels off, and was worried in case the customer should leave and go in another taxi. So he was cussing all through the twenty minutes it took to put the wheel back on. Then he left. He got the fare, but he never said where he took him.' She snuffled. 'He doesn't talk to me much,' she added by way of explanation. Valentin patted her on the shoulder. 'All right, madame. Don't upset yourself. We'll wait till he gets back.' He turned to one of the sergeants. 'Get a man to the main station, another to the square, to the cafe. You know the number of that taxi. The moment he shows up I want to see him - fast.' He left the garage and strode to his car. 'The commissariat,' he said. He had transferred the headquarters of the search to Egletons police station, which had not seen activity like it in years. In a ravine six miles outside Tulle the Jackal dumped the suitcase containing all his English clothes and the passport of Alexander Duggan. It had served him well. The case plummeted over the parapet of the bridge and vanished with a crash into the dense undergrowth at the foot of the gorge. After circling Tulle and finding the station, he parked the car unobtrusively three streets away and carried his two suitcases and grip the half-mile to the railway booking office. 'I would like a single ticket to Paris, second class please,' he told the clerk. 'How much is that?' He peered over his glasses and through the little grille into the cubbyhole where the clerk worked. 'Ninety-seven new francs, monsieur.'","'And what time is the next train please?' 'Eleven-fifty. You've got nearly an hour to wait. There's a restaurant down the platform. Platform One for Paris, je vous en prie.' The Jackal picked up his luggage and headed for the barrier. The ticket was clipped, he picked up the cases again and walked through. His path was barred by a blue uniform. 'Vos papiers, s'il vous plait.' The CRS man was young, trying to look sterner than his years would allow. He carried a submachine carbine slung over his shoulder. The Jackal put down his luggage again and proffered his Danish passport. The CRS man flicked through it, not understanding a word. 'Vous etes Danois?' 'Pardon?' 'Vous . . . Danois.' He tapped the cover of the passport. The Jackal beamed and nodded in delight. 'Danske . . . ja, ja.' The CRS man handed the passport back and jerked his head towards the platform. Without further interest he stepped forward to bar passage to another traveller coming through the barrier. It was not until nearly one o'clock that Louison came back, and he had had a glass of wine or two. His distraught wife poured out her tale of woe. Louison took the matter in hand. 'I shall,' he announced, 'mount to the window and look in.' He had trouble with the ladder to start with. It kept wanting to go its own way. But eventually it was propped against the brickwork beneath the window of the Baroness's bedroom and Louison made his unsteady way to the top. He came down five minutes later. 'Madame le Baronne is asleep,' he announced. 'But she never sleeps this late,' protested Ernestine. 'Well, she is doing today,' replied Louison, 'one must not disturb her.' The Paris train was slightly late. It arrived at Tulle on the dot of one o'clock. Among the passengers who boarded it was a grey-haired Protestant pastor. He took a corner seat in a compartment inhabited only by two middle-aged women, put on a pair of gold-rimmed","reading glasses, took a large book on churches and cathedrals from his hand-grip, and started to read. The arrival time at Paris, he learned, was ten past eight that evening. Charles Bobet stood on the roadside next to his immobilized taxi, looked at his watch and swore. Half past one, time for lunch, and here he was stuck on a lonely stretch of road between Egletons and the hamlet of Lamaziere. With a busted half-shaft. Merde and merde again. He could leave the car and try to walk to the next village, take a bus into Egletons and return in the evening with a repair truck. That alone would cost him a week's earnings. But then again the car doors had no locks, and his fortune was tied up in the rattletrap taxi. Better not leave it for those thieving village kids to ransack. Better to be a little patient and wait until a lorry came along that could (for a consideration) tow him back to Egletons. He had had no lunch, but there was a bottle of wine in the glove compartment. Well, it was almost empty now. Crawling around under taxis was thirsty work. He climbed into the back of the car to wait. It was extremely hot on the roadside, and no lorries would be moving until the day had cooled a little. The peasants would be taking their siesta. He made himself comfortable and fell fast asleep. 'What do you mean he's not back yet? Where's the bugger gone?' roared Commissaire Valentin down the telephone. He was sitting in the commissariat at Egletons, ringing the house of the taxi-driver and speaking to his own policeman. The babble of the voice on the other end was apologetic. Valentin slammed the phone down. All morning and through the lunch-hour radio reports had come in from the squad cars manning the road blocks. No one remotely resembling a tall blond Englishman had left the twenty-kilometre-radius circle round Egletons. Now the sleepy market town was silent in the summer heat, dozing blissfully as if the two hundred policemenfrom Ussel and Clermont Ferrand had never descended upon it. It was not until four o'clock that Ernestine got her way. 'You must go up there again and wake Madame,' she urged Louison. 'It's not natural for anyone to sleep right through the day.'","Old Louison, who could think of nothing better than to be able to do just that, and whose mouth tasted like a vulture's crotch, disagreed, but knew there was no use in arguing with Ernestine when her mind was made up. He ascended the ladder again, this time more steadily than before, eased up the window and stepped inside. Ernestine watched from below. After a few minutes the old man's head came out of the window. 'Ernestine,' he called hoarsely. 'Madame seems to be dead.' He was about to climb back down again when Ernestine screamed at him to open the bedroom door from the inside. Together they peered over the edge of the coverlet at the eyes staring blankly at the pillow a few inches away from the face. Ernestine took over. 'Louison.' 'Yes, my dear.' 'Hurry down to the village and fetch Dr Mathieu. Hurry now.' A few minutes later Louison was pedalling down the drive with all the force his frightened legs could muster. He found Dr Mathieu, who had tended the ills of the people of Haute Chalonniere for over forty years, asleep under the apricot tree at the bottom of his garden, and the old man agreed to come at once. It was past four-thirty when his car clattered into the courtyard of the chateau and fifteen minutes later when he straightened up from the bed and turned round on the two retainers who stood in the doorway. 'Madame is dead. Her neck has been broken,' he quavered. 'We must fetch the constable.' Gendarme Caillou was a methodical man. He knew how serious was the job of an officer of the law, and how important it was to get the facts straight. With much licking of his pencil he took statements from Ernestine, Louison and Dr Mathieu as they sat around the kitchen table. 'There is no doubt,' he said, when the doctor had signed his statement, 'that murder has been done. The first suspect is evidently the blond Englishman who has been staying here, and who has disappeared in Madame's car. I shall report the matter to headquarters in Egletons.' And he cycled back down the hill.","Claude Lebel rang Commissaire Valentin from Paris at six-thirty. 'Alors, Valentin?' 'Nothing yet,' replied Valentin. 'We've had road blocks up on every road and track leading out of the area since mid-morning. He must be inside the circle somewhere, unless he moved far away after ditching the car. That thrice-damned taxi-driver who drove him out of Egletons on Friday morning has not turned up yet. I've got patrols scouring the roads around here for him . . . Hold it a minute, another report just coming in.' There was a pause on the line and Lebel could hear Valentin conferring with someone who was speaking quickly. Then Valentin's voice came back on the line. 'Name of a dog, what's going on around here? There's been a murder.' 'Where?' asked Lebel with quickened interest. 'At a chateau in the neighbourhood. The report has just come in from the village constable.' 'Who's the dead person?' 'The owner of the chateau. A woman. Hold on a moment . . . The Baroness de la Chalonniere.' Caron watched Lebel go pale. 'Valentin, listen to me. It's him. Has he got away from the chateau yet?' There was another conference in the police station at Egletons. 'Yes,' said Valentin, 'he drove away this morning in the Baroness's car. A small Renault. The gardener discovered the body, but not until this afternoon. He thought she must have been sleeping. Then he climbed through the window and found her.' 'Have you got the murder and description of the car?' asked Lebel. 'Yes.' 'Then put out a general alert. There's no need for secrecy any more. It's a straight murder hunt now. I'll put out a nation-wide alert for it, but try and pick up the trail near the scene of the crime if you can. Try to get his general direction of flight.' 'Right, will do. Now we can really get started.' Lebel hung up.","'Dear God, I'm getting slow in my old age. The name of the Baroness de la Chalonniere was on the guest list at the Hotel du Cerf the night the Jackal stayed there.' The car was found in a back street in Tulle at 7.30 by a policeman on the beat. It was 7.45 before he was back in the police station at Tulle and 7.55 before Tulle had contacted Valentin. The Commissaire of Auvergne rang Lebel at 8.05. 'About five hundred metres from the railway station,' he told Lebel. 'Have you got a railway timetable there?' 'Yes, there should be one here somewhere.' 'What was the time of the morning train to Paris from Tulle, and what time is it due at the Gare d'Austerlitz? Hurry, for God's sake hurry.' There was a murmured conversation at the Egletons end of the line. 'Only two a day,' said Valentin. 'The morning train left at eleven-fifty and is due in Paris at . . . here we are, ten past eight . . .' Lebel left the phone hanging and was half-way out of the office yelling at Caron to follow him. The eight-ten express steamed majestically into the Gare d'Austerlitz precisely on time. It had hardly stopped when the doors down its gleaming length were flung open and the passengers were spilling on to the platform, some to be greeted by waiting relatives, others to stride towards the series of arches that led from the main hall into the taxi-rank. One of these was a tall grey-haired person in a dog collar. He was one of the first at the taxi-rank, and humped his three bags into the back of a Mercedes diesel. The driver slammed the meter over and eased away from the entrance to slide down the incline towards the street. The forecourt had a semicircular driveway, with one gate for coming and one for going out. The taxi rolled down the slope towards the exit. Both driver and passenger became aware of a wailing sound rising over and above the clamour of passengers trying to attract the attention of taxi-drivers before their turn had arrived. As the taxi reached the level of the street and paused before entering the traffic three squad","cars and two Black Marias swept into the entrance and drew to a halt before the main arches leading to the station hall. 'Huh, they're busy tonight, the sods,' said the taxi-driver. 'Where to, Monsieur l'Abbe?' The parson gave him the address of a small hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins. Claude Lebel was back in his office at nine o'clock, to find a message asking him to ring Commissaire Valentin at the commissariat in Tulle. He was through in five minutes. While Valentin talked, he took notes. 'Have you fingerprinted the car?' asked Lebel. 'Of course, and the room at the chateau. Hundreds of sets, all matching.' 'Get them up here as fast as you can.' 'Right, will do. Do you want me to send the CRS man from Tulle railway station up as well?' 'No, thanks, he can't tell us more than he already has. Thanks for trying, Valentin. You can stand your boys down. He's in our territory now. We'll have to handle it from here.' 'You're sure it is the Danish pastor?' asked Valentin. 'It could be coincidence.' 'No,' said Lebel, 'it's him all right. He's junked one of the suitcases, you'll probably find it somewhere between Haute Chalonniere and Tulle. Try the rivers and ravines. But the other three pieces of luggage match too closely. It's him all right.' He hung up. 'A parson this time,' he said bitterly to Caron, 'a Danish parson. Name unknown, the CRS man couldn't remember the name on the passport. The human element, always the human element. A taxi- driver goes to sleep by the roadside, a gardener is too nervous to investigate his employer oversleeping by six hours, a policeman doesn't remember a name in a passport. One thing I can tell you, Lucien, this is my last case. I'm getting too old. Old and slow. Get my car ready, would you. Time for the evening roasting.' The meeting at the Ministry was strained and tense. For forty minutes the group listened to a step by step account of the trail from"]
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